Executive Changes at a Glance

  • SolarWinds, headquartered in Austin, Texas, announced on Wednesday that its CEO, Sudhakara Ramakrishna, will step down on September 30, with Chief Product Officer Cullen Childress, a five-year company veteran, stepping in as interim CEO. The company expects to name a permanent CEO within weeks.
  • The IT management software company's CFO, Tim Karaca, will also step down after just over a year in the role. His successor is Samuel Monti, who previously served as CFO of WP Engine, a WordPress hosting provider.
  • Karaca said in a LinkedIn post that after his CFO term ends on September 1, he will serve as an advisor to the company until the end of the year. He wrote: "I leave with genuine confidence in SolarWinds, surrounded by strong leaders like Cullen Childress and Samuel Monti. The talent pipeline is solid, collaboration across teams is smoother than ever, everyone has a sense of ownership, and the product portfolio is stronger than ever with agentic capabilities."

Background and Successor Details

Karaca was promoted to CFO in June 2025, shortly after the company was taken private by Turn-River Capital in a $4.4 billion deal.

At the time of Karaca's appointment, the company was facing a lawsuit from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) stemming from a major cybersecurity breach in 2020, which accused the company and its chief information security officer of defrauding investors by misrepresenting its cybersecurity practices.

The case highlighted the increasingly stringent regulatory and legal environment for executives regarding cybersecurity, but it was dismissed last fall. Nevertheless, some legal experts still view it as a cautionary tale. At the time, law firm McDermott Will & Emery noted in a client briefing that the SEC continues to support the enforcement of cybersecurity rules applicable to investment advisers, broker-dealers, and other regulated entities.

Monti brings more than thirty years of experience working at public and private software companies, including serving as CFO of Epicor Software from 2020 to 2023, and as CFO of Khoros, a customer engagement platform, from 2018 to 2020. He holds a bachelor's degree in accounting from the University of Miami and an MBA from Case Western Reserve University.

Ramakrishna said in the announcement: "Sam is the right partner for the next phase—he has successfully scaled and transformed complex software businesses, and he brings the energy and operational rigor SolarWinds needs as we bring agentic AI to market."